


Anything's Going to Sound Like a Lie If You Say It Like That

by scioscribe



Category: Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies)
Genre: Fake Marriage, Humor, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Pining
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-21
Updated: 2019-12-21
Packaged: 2021-02-26 20:07:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,145
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21674422
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/scioscribe/pseuds/scioscribe
Summary: “I’m not marrying you, Jim.  Find someone else.”“You don’t have to marry me!  You just have to come to Thalamos with me andsaythat we’re married according to the customs of,” he checked his PADD and found the right row of data, “the people of Quirian VI.  Which we are.  Their common-law marriage tradition just involves sleeping three consecutive nights in the same bed, and there was that whole month first-year when we were getting the Denebian bed-bugs out of my bunk, remember?”
Relationships: James T. Kirk/Leonard "Bones" McCoy
Comments: 19
Kudos: 485
Collections: Star Trek Holidays 2019





	Anything's Going to Sound Like a Lie If You Say It Like That

**Author's Note:**

  * For [celli](https://archiveofourown.org/users/celli/gifts).



“Please,” Jim said.

“No.”

Jim held up a bottle of Saurian brandy, dangling it like bait on a fishhook. He gave Bones a smile pitched somewhere between _hopeful_ and _charming_. “Pretty please with booze on top?”

“I’m not marrying you, Jim. Find someone else.”

“You don’t have to marry me! You just have to come to Thalamos with me and _say_ that we’re married according to the customs of,” he checked his PADD and found the right row of data, “the people of Quirian VI. Which we are. Their common-law marriage tradition just involves sleeping three consecutive nights in the same bed, and there was that whole month first-year when we were getting the Denebian bed-bugs out of my bunk, remember?”

He sure as hell hoped Bones remembered it, anyway, and not just because it was a solid, halfway-honest way to get them into the innermost chambers of Thalamos. He wanted—like an idiot—to think that those nights had left a mark on them both. He always came back to them when he was having trouble sleeping: that extra-long twin bed with Bones pressed up against his back, a kind of living space heater who sometimes ground his teeth or muttered OR orders in his sleep. Uncomfortable, sure. But—nice. He’d never spent that many nights with anyone else.

“You kicked me every other night,” Bones said. “Of course I remember.”

“Oh, good.”

“What?”

“Nothing,” Jim said quickly. “So you agree, then. We’re totally married on Quirian VI.”

“We’re not _on_ Quirian VI!”

“Bones,” he said, trying to inject exactly the right amount of calm, rational authority in his voice. Huh, aim it somewhere between Spock and Uhura? That should work. “Thalamos doesn’t recognize anyone unmarried as being a full participant in civic life. It would make dilithium negotiations roughly one trillion times easier if I didn’t have to waste a bunch of time convincing them otherwise.”

“Tough. It’s a hurdle they’re going to have to get over if they’re going to come into the Federation.”

“I agree. I really do. No one is more in favor of sexy singles than I am. But that discussion would take forever, and it’s an _ice planet_ , Bones. You know how I feel about ice planets! Thalamos only noses up above freezing during summer heat waves, and we’re showing up smack in the middle of winter, and also, crucially, we’re not diplomats. The Federation has people who specifically work on the whole broaden-your-cultural-horizons thing, and they’re not us. Don’t you want those people to have job security?”

Bones sighed. “Can’t you just ask someone else?”

“I’ve already asked—”

“I’m not even your first _choice_? You want me to marry you and I’m _not even your first choice_?”

“You were just telling me to ask other people!”

“Well, I didn’t know you’d already done it, did I?” This was a new level of scowl even for Bones. “Exactly how many people already turned you down?”

“Not that many. Hardly anybody.”

“Jim, so help me—”

“Just Sulu and Scotty and Uhura and Spock. But that’s it.”

“Oh, well, if that’s all,” Bones said under his breath. “Why not _Keenser_?”

“Not my type.”

“Everyone’s your type!”

“No, seriously, he’s a great guy, but he wears this swampy kind of aftershave, and it always gives me a headache.”

“Fine. Then take Chekov.”

“Yeah, because I definitely want to introduce myself like that. ‘Hi, I’m Captain James T. Kirk of the _Enterprise_ , and this is my _seventeen-year-old husband_.’ That’s the image the Federation’s going for. Really classy, Bones.” He exhaled. “Look, Uhura is the one who dug up all the different marriage traditions. I’m married to _thirty-eight_ crewmen, and I can go door-to-door until I find somebody who says yes. But I want it to be you.”

Bones snorted. “You want it to be me as long as it can’t be one of the four other people you asked first?”

“I just asked them first because I figured you’d say no,” Jim said.

It was a brazen lie, but it was one he’d been telling for years, so by now he was pretty good at selling it; he was sure his expression stayed completely sincere.

He hadn’t asked Bones first because pretending to be married to Bones was a foolproof way to make himself miserable, and he knew it. It was dangling something in front of him when he knew he couldn’t have it.

But he was out of all the people he could actually trust to turn him down if the plan bothered them, and if he had to move down the list to people who just saw him as their captain—

Well, if Bones didn’t say yes, then he was stuck doing earnest, lengthy cross-cultural diplomacy on a planet that made Delta Vega look like a tropical resort.

Bones was studying him in a way that made Jim feel like he was mounted on a microscope slide. He looked fixedly at the doorframe behind Bones’s shoulder and said, “I mean, of all the people here that I’m apparently legally married to, you’re my favorite.”

“I should damn well hope so,” Bones said, sounding very slightly mollified.

“Is that a yes?”

That got him a truly epic sigh, one that sounded like Bones had pulled up irritation and disgust all the way from his toes. “Yes. Fine.”

“Leonard McCoy, you’ve made me the happiest man in the galaxy,” Jim said.

“I’ve made you,” Bones repeated, his voice dripping with sarcasm, “the happiest man in the galaxy.”

“You know, anything’s going to sound like a lie if you say it like that.”

* * *

Almost as soon as they materialized on Thalamos, they were hip-deep in ceremony. Maybe the real reason these people were so hung up on lifelong commitments was because they didn’t want to face one of these parties down solo.

They were now in the second droning hour of the lead councilor’s welcoming ritual, and Jim was trying so hard not to yawn that he felt like his jaw was going to pop out of its socket. He tried to go over ship schematics in his head, and he wondered if Bones was doing the same with anatomy charts, running through every bone in the body species by sentient species.

Their shoulders were touching.

And then, as they started getting into hour three of the ritual, which involved a freaky kind of interpretative dance, it got to be more than their shoulders. Bones was _sprawling_ against him, his legs open in a wide V. There was a mini-aisle between every two chairs, so he wasn’t being that much of a dick, but—his whole _thigh_ was pressed against Jim’s. And Jim knew he’d never had the strongest sense of personal space himself, sure, but Bones was generally better at that kind of thing.

And then Bones stretched casually and put one of his arms over Jim’s shoulder.

Talking during the ceremony seemed to be totally off-limits, but Jim risked it anyway. He kept his jaw tight and spoke through a kind of stiff, immobile smile. “What are you doing?”

Bones scratched his cheek and, hand covering his mouth, said, “Look around.”

Jim looked and didn’t come up with anything he hadn’t already seen. He was about to ask what the hell Bones was talking about when it finally clicked.

The Thalamoi were all sitting in pairs, just like him and Bones, and they were, almost universally, cuddling like kids on their first date. None of it was obviously sexual, unless he was missing something huge about Thalamou anatomy, but it was still pretty intense, _way_ more than would’ve been normal at a diplomatic event on Earth. People were half-curled around their partners, one person’s head on the other person’s shoulder. The woman right in front of them was playing with her wife’s hair, twining it around her fingers before letting it go and resting her hand delicately on the nape of her wife’s neck instead.

He’d been ignoring it. He’d written it off as having nothing to do with him.

And it still didn’t, in any way that mattered, but Bones was right. The whole reason they were putting on this act in the first place was to show the Thalamoi that they were all more or less on the same page. If they didn’t really sell it, there wouldn’t be any point.

He dipped his chin just slightly to let Bones know he’d gotten it. Tried to get himself to relax.

Seriously, this would have been so much easier with anybody but Bones.

He’d asked Sulu first, because that guy had never met a weird-ass challenge he didn’t want to run at headfirst, but Sulu had turned him down for the obnoxiously cute reason that things with the guy he’d been seeing were starting to get serious, and it maybe wasn’t the best time to fake-marry someone else.

“Especially because you’re attractive,” Sulu had added, which had cheered Jim up.

Scotty had turned him down because, “No offense at all, Captain, but if I want to ask somebody around here out for drinks, I don’t want to have to go explaining first that it’s not gonna break your heart.”

Uhura had laughed at him. Which, considering how they’d met, was fair enough. She’d dug up all those cultural marriage practices to make him the spreadsheet o’ spouses, so she’d actually been really helpful.

Spock had been weird, though. Maybe because Vulcans didn’t really do casual touching? Jim had asked him if he’d consider it and Spock had stared at him unblinkingly for a couple seconds before saying, “I am sorry, Captain, but it is against one of the teachings of Surak.”

“Huh,” Jim had said, mentally reviewing them. “Which one?”

“It is—I have just remembered that I left a very important experiment in process in the laboratory. Please excuse me.”

“What, you _left the stove on?_ Are you kidding me right now?”

“Please excuse me,” Spock had repeated, and then he’d practically vanished in a poof of smoke.

Only that refusal had actually bummed him out, and that was only because Spock had been so weird about it. Jim would have to talk to him later—they had to be at least ninety percent friends now, right? He liked Spock a lot, and if he was doing something that was pissing him off, he wanted to know so he could stop it.

This was how far he’d fallen: it was easier and more relaxing to sit around brainstorming ways to unclench a Vulcan than to be fake-married to his best friend.

He could touch Bones normally, no problem. This was just—this was some Tantalus-level mind-fuckery. If he reached for the solid ground of friendship, it pulled away from, leaving him with the spicy scent of Bones’s cologne. If he even _started_ to think he could grab the fruit just out of his reach, the branches pulled back and reminded him that hey, this was all just a front for the Thalamoi.

Great. Awesome.

He forced his muscles to relax one by one. It was a routine treaty agreement, and no matter how many processions and speeches the Thalamoi wanted to have, even they weren’t going to stretch this out past the agreed-upon time. They only had to spend tonight on Thalamos, and then they’d be gone bright and early the next morning—so long and thanks for the memories. There was no reason he couldn’t handle making kissy faces at Bones for that long.

No reason at all.

The hell of it was that he couldn’t even soak up whatever pathetic kick this might give him. He’d feel like too much of an asshole. So he was going to have to hew closely to some imagined line between “so wooden it’s awkward” and “so into it it’s taking advantage.” Yeah, it would be really fun to spend a whole day and night walking on that kind of tight-rope. Maybe he _would_ have been better off taking Chekov.

Bones started casually massaging the back of Jim’s neck.

_Fuck my life._

Then it was taking everything he had not to give in and moan then and there, because _shit_ , Bones had unbelievably good hands for this kind of thing—strong and flexible and smugly sure of where all the little pressure points were. Jim felt like he was melting into his chair.

And while he had no idea what Bones was thinking, what he was doing was working—in the larger diplomatic sense, not just the ‘dissolving Jim’s brain into goo’ one. He could hear some faint little coos and trills around him as the Thalamoi expressed their approval. Which he hadn’t even realized until then that they’d be consciously withholding, just like he hadn’t realized how far his stiff-necked, kid-in-a-classroom posture was from what they expected of a couple.

His ability to get along with people was supposed to be one of his strengths.

Considering his captaincy had been kicked off by his own would-be first officer marooning him in Frosty the Snowman’s ass-crack and then almost choking the life out of him, Jim had to wonder what the grading curve was there. Maybe most captains started off every morning by kicking someone in the nuts and insulting everybody’s haircuts.

The point was, he was supposed to be _intuitive_. And in particular, he was supposed to be on top of things. And if being in mopey love with Bones was getting in the way of him doing that—in the way of him doing the job he’d built his whole life around—then he had to snap out of it. Right now, he felt like putting himself on report for this level of shoddiness.

Fuck it. He could walk a sexy tightrope as well as anybody could.

So he lay back against Bones, resting his head against the little dip between Bones’s shoulder and his collarbone, and looked up at him.

He’d been figuring that at least anybody, seen upside-down like this, would be at least a little less attractive: nostrils, chin undersides, stuff like that.

Bones, because he could be a real bastard sometimes, looked just fucking fine.

At least it won him a coo from the Thalamoi.

* * *

After another hour of him being draped all over Bones like some kind of living blanket, the welcoming ceremonies finally ended, and they were allowed to go drop their bags in their room.

Jim had steeled himself for there being only one bed, obviously. Fine. Sharing was a little more awkward now that he was nursing this idiot crush, but he could live with it.

What he couldn’t live with, as it turned out, was the Thalamou equivalent of a honeymoon suite.

“Rose petals, Bones,” Jim said.

Bones was only a step behind him, but as he rounded the corner to see the bed—scattered with a luscious arrangement of peach- and crimson-colored Thalamou rose petals—all that happened was that a smile tugged at the corner of his mouth.

“Now, darlin’, you shouldn’t have.”

“I didn’t!” He strode around the room, picking out offenses one by one. The rose petals were just the start. “I’m ninety percent sure this is some kind of champagne—and are these _fuzzy handcuffs_?”

“Looks like it,” Bones said, sparing them a glance. He was sweeping the rose petals off onto the floor, clearing a space for him to hop up onto the bed. He settled in, lying there with his hands laced together behind his head, regarding Jim with an irritatingly casual look. “They must’ve just done a little research into human customs. I don’t know what you’re getting so riled up about.”

“You,” Jim said incredulously. “ _You_ don’t know what _I’m_ getting so ‘riled up’ about.”

A trace of welcome, familiar irritation crossed Bones’s features. “Don’t throw those damn air-quotes at me. It’s an expression.”

“You’re the one who should be freaking out here,” Jim said. “You’ve told me a hundred times that this stuff makes you queasy. ‘I barely got out of my marriage with my head still on my shoulders,’ that’s a direct quote. ‘Get those flowers out of here, they’re the last damn thing I want to see,’ that’s another one.”

“That was years ago! And those flowers you’re talking about were hideous.”

“They were for my mom! You only had to put up with them for a night before I could give them to her for her birthday!” He grabbed up a handful of rose petals and flung them onto Bones’s chest. “You’re telling me this cliché bullshit is an improvement?”

Bones sat up. There was a kind of dangerous gleam in his eyes, one that made something in Jim tense like they were about to lunge into warp factor eight. “What the hell’s gotten into you? It’s a _joke,_ Jim. So they think we’re the kind of married where we ought to be fawning all over each other—what the hell does it matter? We’ve got two hours until the next godawful state function, you look like hell, knock the rose petals off your side and take a _nap_ , dammit. Because the only thing I can think of is you’re _cranky_.”

Bones was right, really. It was a joke. It was just that the joke was on him, so he couldn’t help taking it personally.

None of this meant anything to Bones. It didn’t even mean enough for him to get awkward and flustered and weird about it, because hey, they were such good friends, they were so comfortable with each other, why not just laugh it off?

It was what Jim would have done, if he’d been there with one of his other thirty-seven spouses.

He felt his mouth stretch into what was hopefully a good enough fake smile. “See, look how far we’ve come as a couple. This morning, you didn’t even want to be married to me in the first place.”

“Jim—”

“You’re right. I’m just a little out of it. You stay here, I’m just gonna go stretch my legs.”

He made his escape before Bones, being Bones, could fuzzy-handcuff him to a bedpost and drag all his secrets out of him.

* * *

An hour later, Jim was beginning to revise his opinion on Thalamos. They might have had a stick up their collective ass about some especially gooey-eyed kind of monogamy, but they also had open bars.

He knew better than to get drunk, however much he wanted to just crawl into a bottle and screw the cap on behind him—he was absolutely fucking determined not to compromise the job, no matter where his head was. But he didn’t think it would be a _historically_ bad decision to sand the edges down a little. It’d make it easier to crawl all over Bones the next time they had to make a public appearance, anyway.

_Yeah, because you’re always a happy drunk. That’s why Pike met you when you were throwing a party for all your closest friends._

His conscience was getting a Southern accent. And that was supposed to _stop_ him from drinking?

 _I’m not getting drunk,_ he told the little voice in his head. _I’m just—loosening myself up._

“You are Captain Kirk,” a Thalamou man said to him.

Jim pointed at him. “Right in one. And you’re—”

“Eddis.” The man frowned. “I was under the impression that the high councilors had allowed you and your husband time and privacy before your next engagement.”

“They have. I’m enjoying it.”

“But where is your husband?”

He bit back a _none of your goddamn business_ and said only, “In our room, probably taking a nap. We don’t go around attached at the hip. Where’s _your_ spouse?”

“She’s the bartender,” Eddis said. He sounded faintly pitying. “I come here to keep her company.”

“Oh.” That didn’t give him much room to accuse Eddis of hypocrisy. “Well, good for you.”

“I share my wife’s skill for listening to the troubles of others,” Eddis said. “And it is common, on Thalamos, to seek the wisdom and help of friends when one’s marriage is foundering. I know you cannot be said to have any friends here yet—but I favor our relationship to the Federation. I would serve you in that capacity if I could, Captain Kirk.”

It was basically impossible to doubt the guy’s sincerity. The Thalamoi all had these super-light eyes, shading from cloudy crystal to the palest gray, and it made them all look—to humans, anyway—a little unearthly, like it wouldn’t be a huge surprise to find they all had some kind of higher wisdom. Even if it all boiled down to “ten hot tips to rekindle the old flame.”

What the hell. It wouldn’t kill him to give Eddis a fragment of the truth and let Eddis feel like he’d helped out somehow. And it would retroactively give this round of drinks a purpose beyond drowning his self-pity.

“We used to be on the same page,” Jim said, turning around to face Eddis head-on. That much was true, too—he’d spent a long time being totally fine with being just friends. Occasional surprise hard-ons aside. “But lately—lately things aren’t the same. I’m the one who changed, though, not him. It’s not his fault. I just wound up wanting—more, somehow.”

“He seemed readily affectionate with you at the ceremony,” Eddis said. “In fact—with apologies—I thought that perhaps _you_ were reluctant… at first.”

Wow, people really had been keeping a sharp eye on them. He smiled ruefully. “Yeah, that kind of thing is easy for him. Once upon a time, it was easy for me too.”

“What comes hard, then?”

“Something deeper. More meaningful.” He drained his next glass. “My mom and dad, they were this huge, tragic love story, you know? I grew up with that hanging over my head, and I thought it had to be impossible for anybody else to find that. I didn’t know why anybody would even want it. But with Bones—one day I just had it. And I understood. I mean, if anything ever happened to him, it would kill me. I love him like my mom loved my dad. And he…”

The words dried up.

“You suspect,” Eddis said gently, “that your loss would be easier on him than his would be on you.”

“Yeah,” Jim said, although that hadn’t really been what he was trying to get at. It was more that they’d been on the same page, like he’d said, and now they were in completely different books. He was in this melodramatic death-and-glory love story, and Bones was in, whatever, a book of weird country-fried down-home sayings.

“I’m sorry. Let me get you another drink.”

Jim shook his head. “I should really stop.”

“Please, I insist.”

Well, he could probably have one more without crossing beyond the “chatty and morose” stage into the “horrible decisions” stage.

And it was time for him to shape up again anyway, and that meant diving right back into doing things he didn’t really want to do just because it would make some random Thalamou guy happy.

It was kind of a cockeyed version of diplomacy, but it worked for him.

He made himself flash what was hopefully a winning smile. “Sure.”

Eddis stood. “I will have my wife make something special for you.” He clasped Jim’s shoulder. “Thank you for trusting me with your worries, Captain Kirk.”

“You’re welcome?”

He let Eddis slip away to talk to his wife. He sat there fiddling with the saltshaker, tilting it back and forth.

Back in the room, Bones would be stretched out across the bed, maybe with one of those silky rose petals sneaking into his hair despite his best attempts to stop it. Grumpy Bones with a fraction of a flower crown. If they were really married, Jim could go back there and lie down beside him. Put an arm around him.

This was how bad this had gotten. He was having cuddle fantasies.

Anyway, if they were really married, he wouldn’t be out here at all. He would never have left.

Eddis came back with something that was probably the Thalamou version of a Slippery Nipple or Sex on the Beach, some cocktail that was supposed to singlehandedly remind you of some Rigel VII vacation and save your marriage through sheer sexy nostalgia. He tilted the glass towards Eddis—cheers, buddy—and then drank. He had to keep himself from making a face at the taste. It was creamy and bitter at the same time, and honestly, what it reminded him most of was come. At least the color was—

Pain slammed into his stomach, making him double over, gripping the edge of the bar for support. He could barely breathe. It felt like a dozen rusty knives were slashing through him.

“What—”

Then it was like he’d been dipped in kerosene and set on fire. He was burning alive. He kept squeezing his eyes shut against the searing pain, but whenever he could get them open, he couldn’t see anything wrong with him at all. Just the glass of creamy-bitter stuff, the bartender’s specialty. He tried to grab Eddis, but all he did was fall off the barstool. When he hit the floor, the pain just reverberated through him.

He could distantly feel tears running down his face. He managed to get hold of Eddis’s leg.

“Why?”

“It’s all right, Captain Kirk,” Eddis said soothingly. “We’ve already sent someone to get your husband.”

Bones. Right. Bones was a doctor, he could give him something—

“I know it hurts.” Eddis patted his shoulder again, and this time it felt like his hand was made of barbed wire. “But we believe in your marriage. Your husband will kiss you, and the power of his love will take your pain away. You’ll see his regard for you.”

Mother _fucker_. “You think—” He took a strangled breath, fighting against the pain. “You think he’s going to give me some kind of _true love’s kiss_ and that’s going to fix the fact that you _poisoned me_?”

“Have faith,” Eddis said.

It didn’t even matter that Bones _didn’t_ love him like that. Bones could have been hip-deep in planning their wedding and how they’d die in each other’s arms, and it wouldn’t have mattered, because this was _bullshit_ , why had he opened his mouth and spouted off all that garbage about tragic love stories? He was going to die because he couldn’t just keep his mouth shut and be grateful he had Bones’s friendship at all.

God, it hurt so much. He couldn’t survive this.

He didn’t know how long he lay there on the floor, clenching jaw tight to keep from screaming. It felt like an eternity. He sort of knew Eddis was still talking to him, but he couldn’t hear him anymore. Everything was just a pulsing red haze.

And then a familiar voice cut through it.

“What the hell did you do to him?”

Bones.

He didn’t really believe anything in Bones’s medkit would help him right now—unknown alien poison would mean hours of tests before they could even really risk a sedative, and he knew he’d be gone by then. His heart would stop, plain and simple. The human body wasn’t built for this. Bones wasn’t here to save him, even if he thought he was, and even if the fucking Thalamoi thought so too.

But dying with Bones there was okay.

He felt Bones move him—even that little bit of his body dragging across the floor raised up fresh agony—and then his head was on Bones’s thighs and Bones’s hands were all over him, checking his pulse, fixing a blood pressure cuff on him.

Jim looked up at him blearily, trying to see him through the haze. His own eyelashes, wet with tears, were getting in the way.

“Bones,” he whispered.

Bones stroked his hair. “Dammit, Jim, I let you go off on your own for two seconds.” He sounded hoarse.

“I liked…” He tried to swallow, but he couldn’t really get his throat to work. “I liked the rose petals.”

“Yeah, me too.”

“Beam us up. I don’t want to—die here. _Enterprise_.”

Bones took out his communicator and made the call, gathering Jim even closer to him. He felt something falling into his hair, hot and wet. Bones was crying.

“So help me, if he dies—”

“You have to kiss him!” Eddis said. He sounded almost frantic now. “He needs to feel your love for him! You’re killing him!”

“Oh, for God’s sake.”

Bones moved Jim again, holding him upright this time, putting them face to face.

“I do, you know,” Bones said softly. “Love you.”

He brushed his mouth against Jim’s. His lips were chapped, bitten too many times; a whole lifetime of irritation had left his kiss rough by default. But it was only the lightest of touches, like he knew that every nerve ending Jim had felt raw. He was warm and his mouth was sweet, blurring the bitterness of the drink. Jim leaned into him, opening his mouth further. This was how he wanted to die, this was the last thing he wanted to feel—

And then he was breaking apart.

They rematerialized on the transport pad with Bones’s hands framing Jim’s face and Jim’s fingers knotted in Bones’s shirt.

“Oh, well, that must have gone well then,” Scotty said, his voice cutting through the conspicuous silence. “I have to say, Dr. McCoy, you had me a wee bit worried with how you sounded, but really—”

Nothing hurt.

“You love me?” Jim said.

“Right,” Scotty said. “I’ll just go then, shall I? And I’ll put a security lock on the door so no one else will, ah, interfere.”

His ears were pounding, but he waited until he heard the transporter room door hiss open and then closed again.

“You love me,” Jim repeated.

“There’s no way that worked,” Bones said. He sounded pissed, and his face was turning brick red. “There’s no such thing as a ‘true love’s kiss,’ let alone one that would counteract—”

“But if there were, you totally would have just given me one.”

“It must have been the transporter. Damn things have to be good for something. It must have done something to whatever they dosed you with.”

“Bones.”

Bones looked somewhere over his shoulder. “I don’t expect you to feel the same way,” he said gruffly. “I know you didn’t even want to be there with me. I mean, the whole thing was practically making you break out in hives. But yeah, Jim.” He finally met Jim’s eyes. “I’d throw you down on a bed of rose petals any day of the week. But you don’t want that.”

“Well, that’s news to me,” Jim said.

Bones stared at him. “Wait, what?”

“Bones, I’m _crazy_ about you. It was _killing_ me to have to touch you like that without it—without it being real. The whole reason that matchmaker from hell down there drugged me was because I was pouring my heart out to him about you.”

Bones just went on staring at him like he’d grown a second head. “But you never hit on me,” he said, very slowly, like he was spelling it out to a toddler. “I’ve seen you flirt with brick walls. You once spent half an hour trying to charm a potted plant.”

“For the last time, the people on that planet looked really similar to their vegetation—”

“Forgive me for assuming that you would have made a move sometime in the last _three years_ if you’d wanted anything to do with me!”

“It mattered with you,” Jim said quietly. “What the hell was I supposed to do if you said no?”

Bones’s scowl finally dissolved into a look of pure resignation. He chuckled, putting his hands back on Jim’s face. “You’re an idiot.”

“You’re not exactly coming out of this covered in glory yourself.” He rested his forehead against Bones’s. “Date me. Or have date nights with me even though we’re already married on Quirian VI. And let’s never, ever go back to Thalamos, because I’m not giving them any credit for this.”

“I guess that’s a deal,” Bones said. He skimmed his thumb across Jim’s cheekbone, and then he leaned in and kissed him again. This time, he didn’t need to act like Jim was going to break.

* * *

“I think I’ve got it,” Bones said, straightening up. He stabbed his finger in the direction of the vial. “It’s a poison that’s deactivated by accompanying nanobots that pick up on a spike of serotonin.”

“I can’t believe you’re demystifying our true love’s kiss. Is that what you’re going to tell people now about how we started dating? ‘I deactivated his nanobots’?” He frowned. “Actually, that sounds kind of hot. You can deactivate my nanobots if you want.”

“Face it, Jim.” He peeled the latex gloves off his hands with an elasticized snap. “We have a lousy love story. When we met I threw up on you—”

“Twice.”

“—and you still looked like somebody’s punching bag. Then we wasted a few years, accidentally got married because you had bedbugs, and I deactivated your nanobots. You know, you’re right. It does sound hotter than you’d think.” He pressed a button on the lab counter, sealing up the samples of the Thalamou cocktail. “That’s my end of things. What did you wind up doing with the negotiations?”

Jim waved his hand. “Eh, I sent Spock.”

“He’s not married. Don’t they think he’s—”

“Basically a kid, yeah, but I figured it would be good payback for poisoning me if they had to get lectured for days by what they think is a prissy kid Vulcan in a bad mood. I trust him to get the signatures even without all the rigamarole. He’s pretty motivated. He didn’t like that I almost died, by the way, it was kind of flattering.”

Bones rolled his eyes. “I know he’s got all the personal cuddliness of an ice cube, but of course he didn’t like that you almost died.”

“I thought maybe he was mad at me. He was weird—like, weird even for Spock—when I asked him to be my lawful wedded husband for the day.”

“Oh.” Bones looked a little sheepish, which wasn’t an expression Jim could remember seeing on him before. “That might have been my fault, actually. I made a couple of—let’s just say ill-advised comparisons back when he marooned you. I think he figured out I had… feelings.”

Jim tried and failed to grasp the concept of Spock awkwardly tiptoeing around his secret knowledge of Bones’s crush. He was so going to pump him for all the details on that later. But right now, he had a slightly more pressing question. “What kind of comparison?”

Bones flushed. “Prize stallion.”

He strangled the laugh that tried to come out of his mouth and looped his fingers in the waistband of Bones’s pants instead, pulling him close. “You’re so hot for me.”

“It was a _metaphor_.”

“If you want to ride me, you totally can.”

He expected Bones to roll his eyes at that, but instead, Bones just raised his eyebrows, moving in closer.

“My quarters,” Bones said.

“That’s an excellent suggestion, doctor. This is why you’re my Chief Medical Officer.”

He followed Bones down the corridor, smiling and nodding to everyone he passed—hopefully in a manner that didn’t suggest he was about to get laid, although everybody had probably figured it out by now anyway. Who designed these uniform pants? It was literally impossible to conceal a hard-on in these things.

Bones keyed in the door code.

As soon as Jim stepped inside, he burst out laughing.

“Where did you even get these?”

Flower petals covered every available surface. They weren’t roses—Jim’s flower knowledge was approximately nil, but even he could tell the petals were too long and pointy for that. They were orange with thin black stripes, and they filled the room with a spicy scent that almost reminded him of gingerbread.

“Sulu,” Bones said. “I didn’t tell him to _bury_ the place, though.” He picked one up and rubbed it between his fingers, scrutinizing it. “This had better not be off the carnivorous one.”

“It’s not like it’s going to eat you _now_.”

“It’s the idea of it. A man doesn’t want to lie down on a bed and feel like—”

“Why don’t you lie down on the bed,” Jim said, “and feel like I’m seducing you? Damn, you Quirian VI-marry someone and a couple of years later, the heat goes right out of the relationship.”

“I’ll show you heat,” Bones said. He dragged him down to the bed.

Of all Jim’s thirty-eight marriages, he definitely liked this one the best.


End file.
